The world is a crazy place. Cook for someone soon. Light the candles. Breathe. Everyone's fed.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Winter Squash-Mushroom Salad with Sherry-Truffle Oil Vinaigrette

There are meals when the main course is light, delicate -- a brothy-frothy soup or a small piece of white fish with a few vegetables. Or maybe you just have some squash leftover you'd like to make into a pretty "meaty" meal. On the other hand, this would also be a decidedly different and total side for a few great slices of pork loin or a lovely duck breast over the holidays. If any of those things is the case or even if none is, this is your salad.

It starts with cooking a whole acorn squash and about half of a normal-sized butternut squash (I do both in the microwave for recipes like this.*) If you like, a Hubbard or a Turban squash could be used instead. Let the squash cool a bit and then peel and cut it into one-inch pieces. Meantime, a few mushrooms are sautéed, stirred into the squash pieces, and gathered together with a decadent vinaigrette. A bit of cheese, a handful of fresh spinach and arugula, some chopped nuts for crunch and you have your salad. Couldn't be easier, quicker, or more luscious. So winter. So warming. So if you're cooking squash one night for dinner, fix an extra couple so you have have this the next day. Here's how:

1. In a large bowl, mix squash and mushrooms with sage and parsley. Salt and pepper generously. 2. Stir in the peeled Parmesan carefully.3. Drizzle salad with enough vinaigrette to moisten lightly. Toss gently, but thoroughly to make sure all of the ingredients are covered with dressing. 4. Divide the salad between four salad plates and top each with a tablespoon of chopped nuts and 1/2 tablespoon of chopped cranberries, if using.5. Serve immediately.*To cook squash in the microwave: Pour 2 tablespoons water in a 3 quart Pyrex or microwave-safe dish. Carefully cut acorn or butternut squash in half; scoop our seeds and strings. Add a peeled clove of garlic or a peeled shallot to each squash half. Place squash in dish and cover tightly with plastic wrap. Microwave on high about five minutes, remove from oven with mitts and, with a small sharp knife, check for doneness. You want the squash just tender, not mushy. If it's not done, put it back in the microwave and cook another minute or two and check again until the knife is easily inserted. Repeat if necessary. Add the garlic/shallot (mince them) to the salad.

In a small bowl, whisk together vinegars, shallot, salt and peppers, and mustard. Drizzle in oils, whisking, until well-combined.

A book you can trust from beginning to end--wonderful recipes and great wine advice, ideas, and thoughts. Nearly ten years old now, it has stood the test of time in my kitchen.

*This vinaigrette is one, with a bit of change, from Andrea Immer's (Robinson) book, Everyday Cooking with Wine, which is one of my favorites. She uses a recipe much like this for her Warm Wild Mushroom salad, which is one I often make.

**Can use all olive oil.

around the 'hood

My choir's (I use the pronoun loosely) cantata was last weekend and they blew it out of the sanctuary! In between a Taize Advent supper, Lectio Divina and service, the last rehearsals and worship, the wind whipped and more than 12 inches of snow covered our world. More than 600 crashes and 1,000 cars in ditches in a 24-hour period! Two of the crashes happened to my folk trying to get to worship or rehearsals in the hilly terrain of our church, Prospect Park United Methodist in Minneapolis. (Everyone's ok.)

The temperature sits at 8 degrees Fahrenheit now (way below zero with windchill) and the pups and I are inside except for quick forays out into the white for pee breaks.

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Among virtually every culture on Earth, anything worth doing is best done over dinner. Bring out a nicely braised roast, a hot loaf of bread, and a slice of lemon pie, and rifts can be healed, pacts sealed, loves revealed. Even the condemned do not want to leave the world without one last supper. --Natalie Angier

New York Times, November, 2000.

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike." ~ John Muir

“I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.”E.B. White

"We sing because we can."(John Bell)"And remember, anyone can cook" Auguste Gusteau."No one grows old at the table." (Italian proverb)"A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do."-PJ O'Rourke."Where there is cake, there is hope. And there is always cake." - Dean Koontz... plus..."Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed."-- Arthur Rimbaud.

When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, 'Now, is that political or social?' He said, 'I feed you.' Because the good news to a hungry person is bread." --Desmond Tutu"People who love to eat are always the BEST people."Julia Child.“I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud, because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.” --Anne Lamott.

It seems that all my bridges have been burntBut you say that's exactly how this grace thing works.It's not the long walk home that will change this heartBut the welcome I receive with every start

-Roll Away Your Stone, Mumford & Sons

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. --Robert Louis Stevenson

If we have no peace, it's because we have forgotten that we belong to one another. --Mother Teresa

Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. -Lewis Carroll, ALICE IN WONDERLAND

Psalm 96:1

Oh sing to the Lord a new song.

..

"I do not understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us." Anne Lamott

About Me

Church choir director, writer, avid home cook, recipe tester, and teacher, I'm married to the love of my life, the mom of great adult children, grandma to one adorable boy, and the owner of one spoiled golden retriever. Most of the time, I live right in Colorado Springs, but I also love in St. Paul, Minnesota (home of the best farmer's market in the United States) I support World Food Programme in the fight against world hunger.